I Love Living in America Because...

The 4th of July. Wow. 2009 is officially 50% behind us, and America is officially about to celebrate with a day off, fireworks and picnics with their families and friends. My seven-year-old daughter just asked me what the 4th of July actually celebrated. So, I dusted off my 6th grade America History lesson and let her know that tomorrow, back in 1776, members of Congress ALL agreed to adopt the Declaration of Independence, which basically said the colonies (try explaining that one to a 2nd grader) were going to be separate from Great Britain. This Constitution still provides the legal roadmap for America and contains the coolest phrase around -- “all Men are created equal.” Of course, she immediately asked why girls weren’t equal, but I thought I would save this one for another rainy day in Denver.

What I didn’t remember is that Philadelphians marked the first anniversary of American independence with a spontaneous celebration, but Independence Day only became a true American celebration after the War of 1812. How’s that for a little history lesson before noon? Not bad for a PR gal…

The Gov Gab Blog Team always does a nice job in their daily blog updates and I found today’s post to be especially relevant (and the first time I have seen the word “rigamarole” used in a blog post, which I greatly appreciate).
Take a minute and finish the thought, “I love living in America because….” In the meantime, take a minute and read their blog post. You can also sign up to receive daily emails from their site.

http://blog.usa.gov/roller

I Love Living in America Because...
Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:00:00 -0500
There are things that we all wish were better with our country. Like you, I think I pay too much in taxes (I have yet to meet a person who thinks he doesn't pay enough). I get monumentally annoyed and disgusted when our political leaders get caught doing unethical things. I get frustrated with the red tape and the rigamarole that seems to accompany some of my interactions with the government, and I get angry when I hear my tax dollars are occasionally wasted on stupidity.

It would be easy to sit and gripe all day about our government, but tomorrow is July 4th, a day we celebrate all that is good with our country. Our founding fathers risked their lives to declare their independence. They created this country on some basic principles that hopefully we all believe in even today. Throughout our history people have served and sacrificed for our country to advance the ideas of freedom of speech, equality, and representation. These are rights that many people in other countries don't have or are struggling to obtain.

There are many reasons for all of us to be proud of our country. I would like to see us all set aside the sniping and griping for this one day and think about why we appreciate living in the United States. Please express your heart-felt birthday wishes by sending in a comment. How would you finish this thought, “I love living in America because...”

I will get us started: “I love living in America because I work for a government that allows me to write blogs that are totally my own (complete with embarrassing stories and quirky details). I have the freedom to express criticisms about my government and no one calls me a traitor, slaps handcuffs on me, or throws me in jail for doing so.”

From all of us at GroundFloor Media, Happy 4th. Have a wonderful holiday weekend.

How Iran May Legitimize Twitter…

Has anyone been reading the posts from Iran on Twitter? The two people on the ground (@iran09 and @persiankiwi ) seem to be accomplishing what traditional communication channels have not been able to muster. Here is a link to the disturbing photos http://twitpic.com/photos/madyar and an excerpt from MSNBC (thanks @RushtonM).

"With traditional reporting silenced and e-mail and many Web sites shut down by the government, much of the information from Tehran was coming through social media Internet services like Twitter.com and Facebook.com, which can be accessed through mobile devices and cell phone networks.

Twitter postponed a scheduled blackout for maintenance Tuesday so as not to silence the protesters after the U.S. State Department lobbied it to keep its service running during the unrest, a State Department official said. The official said the United States wanted to highlight “Twitter’s role as an important means of communication — not with us — but horizontally in Iran.”

Messages from people claiming to be eyewitnesses to the violence were flowing into Twitter at the rate of hundreds a minute. Posts would flood in, only to slow to a trickle for a minute or two as Iranian censors sought to stanch the flow of information. Then posts would resume in a torrent as users found ways around the censorship."

Don't forget the strategy!

One of the first questions I often get when people find out about our GFsM program is "Can you build me a Facebook page?" This is akin to "My teenage daughter said we should be start a blog. Can you help?" or "Can you Twitter for me?".

Can you spot the pattern? Yep, they're all tactics. For some reason, social media often seems to lend itself to a tactical approach, rather than a strategical one...at least initially. My theory for this is because so many people view social media as simply a bunch of tactics. Facebook Pages, Twitter contests, YouTube Channels... they're all basically tactics and that's also how most people are introduced to social media.

When I get the inevitable question asking me if we can perform a specific social media tactic, I try to caution folks to take a step back, a deep breath and ask yourself some questions. Are your customers using social media? Where are social conversations about your company or your industry taking place? What are your goals for executing a social media program? In other words... what is your strategy?! We all need a reminder some time.

As a side note... One of my fave PR bloggers, Todd Defren, recently blogged a theory that the economic crisis leads many marketers to focus more on tactics and less on strategy - perhaps another reason why we've recently shoved strategy to the backburner.

Keeping Good Company

It’s great to see nine U.S. members of the Public Relations Global Network in the latest O’Dwyer’s Rankings of Top 169 Independent PR Firms. As #109 on the list, GroundFloor Media is proud to be affiliated with these great agencies and relieved to know that we can rely on each and every one of them should any of our clients have a specific need in any of their respective niches or geographic markets.

Congrats to the following:
67. CooperKatz & Co., New York
70. DVL, Nashville
75. L.C. Williams & Associates, Chicago
91. Xenophon Strategies, Washington, D.C.
102. The Castle Group, Boston
109. GroundFloor Media, Denver
140. VPE Public Relations, Los Angeles
149. Landis Communications, Inc., San Francisco
157. Buchanan PR, Philadelphia

PR and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

As the worlds of public relations and Internet marketing continue to merge in ways never seen before, we often find ourselves working closely with complementary agencies to help our clients further their message in the world of online PR. Our friends, the online advertising experts, at The Booyah Agency work side-by-side with us on many of our client campaigns and they have put together a post that I thought was worth sharing.

Online PR is Public Relations & SEO Working Together
You finally got your website full of great optimized content and persuasive calls to actions, interactive maps, interesting blog posts, and other hot Internet technologies – now what? The most important part of optimizing your website actually happens off the page – where links and mentions of your website and company play a vital role in how popular and important your website will become.

Quality one-way links from websites related to yours is the key to top rankings on the search engines. You need to develop strategies to ‘win’ these links. Obtaining these links is not easy, but winning targeted links with important keywords in mind are proven to produce results. When pursuing one-way links, keep in mind that every website is run by a person, or a group of people, meaning that you not only need to target websites but also ‘convince’ real people to add a link to their site. This makes good public relations and link building a natural fit when combined to form an Online Public Relations campaign.

There are several key reasons why Online PR can be effective for SEO:

1. Press releases can be easily optimized and targeted to specific keywords using the Heading, Subheading and About Us section of the press release.
2. News stories stay online and can still be read for months after the event.
3. Online press releases can increase traffic and provide link popularity.
4. There are dozens of good free online PR sites and several quality newswire services.

For high quality one-way links, the paid PR services provide more opportunity for keyword rich links and often provide a greater distribution for your story. While you don’t have to use the paid PR services for every online Press Release, it can be well worth the fee (often under $100) for your important online Press Releases.

Mashable: Prop 8 Decision Protesters Use Wikis and Facebook to Organize

Social media is a great medium to quickly gather together supporters for a specific issue or cause, but a lot of causes don't know where or how to start.

Yesterday Mashable's Ben Parr did a great post about how Prop 8 protesters are using social media to organize and raise awareness about their cause. If you're one of those folks who aren't sure where or how to use social media to get the word about about your cause, be sure to read this post.

Live from Boulder Social Media Workshop...

I've decided to kick off the holiday weekend with a little live blogging from a social media hotspot in Boulder! This morning a number of us GFMers are participating in a social media workshop (Social Media and PR in the Digital Age) put on by the Boulder Chamber and the Small Business Development Center. Our own Laura Love is currently moderating a panel with TechStar's Andrew Hyde, The Camera's Kevin Kaufman, Filtrbox's Ari Newman and ColoradoBiz's Mike Cote discussing the changing social media and PR landscape. While I feel like I've attended hundreds of these discussions it's amazing that the content is ALWAYS different. Twitter seems to be the hottest discussion topic right now and how companies can use to get their news out and learn what people are saying about their businesses.

Other interesting insight and advice from the social media junkie panel:

• Be sure to start off your social media program by listening! What is the social media universe saying about you and your company now?
• Find the social media channel that makes you excited to participate and get involved in that channel. If you like it, you're more likely to do it more often.
• Show your personality!
• Be honest, authentic and transparent.
• Check out what your competitors and others in your industry are doing on social media. It's a great way to get ideas!
• Check out Twitter in Plain English video - a great explanation about what is Twitter.
• Demographics for social media channels are all across the board. Twitter seems to skew older than Facebook and Facebook skews older than MySpace.
• It's more important to have good your content rather than just frequent content.
• Handheld video is a great way to add an extra punch to your social media campaign. It doesn't have to be professionally shot video.
• Top pitfalls to avoid: don't pretend to be something you're not; be sure to take advantage of the tracking tools available; remember you're having conversations in a permanent, public archive - think twice before you post; be conversational, not a corporate robot
• Take a few deep breaths and have two people review your response before responding to an angry post.
• Social media is a skill set that is essential for all marketers and PR pros today.
• Check out LinkedIn for B2B companies.

Last words of advice:

• Kevin: be brave and curious and explore
• Ari: Don't get focused on the tool; social media is bigger than a single tool
• Andrew: Google is your home page. Have a personal blog and a company blog.
• Mike: Get ready.